Happy Childhood Equals Higher Income

Money makes the world go round, but what’s the secret to success? Experience, inheritance, or is it luck? Research has revealed there is one more secret to money - a happy adolescence. Quite a contrast to the image of youth, the first thing that adolexcence brings to mind is anger and rebellion. But a recent study tells us that happiness without external help translates to big bucks in the future.

Dr Jan-Emmanuel De Neve of University College London and Professor Andrew Oswald of Warwick University studied 90,000 random individuals. They took into account different aspects of their lives but concluded that if they had a happy childhood, they brought in higher salaries as adults. What the result reveals is that, if you are happy with life at 22, you are bound to earn $2,000 earnings per annum at 29.

Even when they compared siblings, they considered physical health, genetic variation, IQ, self-esteem and current happiness of both the siblings. But the results were the same; the happier sibling roped in higher incomes.

Though it is not known why happiness in your childhood is linked to higher income, the researchers suggested that ‘people who have happier childhoods are more likely to obtain a degree and a job, have higher degrees of optimism and extraversion, and less neuroticism.'

Their work highlights the importance of general well-being, "not just because happiness is what the general population aspires to (instead of GDP), but also for its productive effects – i.e., it may pay off to focus policy on maximising happiness and minimising suffering."